Counterfeit World by Daniel F. Galouye Page B

vigorously denied that possibility. “Our security measures are foolproof, Mr. Siskin.”
    Siskin glowered. “Then it was done on the inside! I want everybody double-screened all over again!”
    Back in my office, I paced in front of the window, watching the once-again orderly scene outside. Only pollster pickets. No more surging mobs. But how long would it stay that way? And what was the common denominator underlying the reaction monitors, the thermite attack and all the other impossible things that had happened?
    Somehow I was certain there had to be a fundamental relationship among all the bizarre occurrences of the past week or so—Fuller’s death, Lynch’s disappearance, Lynch’s “total erasure” from the whole web of former experience, Fuller’s bequest of a now nonexistent Achilles sketch, an altered plaque on a trophy behind Limpy’s bar, the off-and-on-again police investigation.
    Take the thermite bombing: It had ostensibly been an aggressive action by the Association of Reaction Monitors against the institution that was threatening that group’s continued existence. But was it that? Or had it been intended, instead, for me?
    Who was behind it? Certainly not Siskin. For even though he might conceivably want me removed, he already had the means of achieving that through the police investigation which he was manipulating.
    Then, as I paused to stare out the window, a novel possibility suggested itself: many of the perplexing effects might have been aimed indirectly at the environment simulator itself!
    Fuller’s death, Lynch’s disappearance, the thermite charge, my near-accidents—a planned campaign to eliminate the only two simulectronicists capable of insuring REIN’s success?
    The finger pointed back at the Association of Reaction Monitors. But, again, logic shouted it couldn’t be ARM. It had to be some agency with either extraphysical powers or a convincing means of simulating them.
    I couldn’t shake the succession of enigmas out of my mind, not even while sharing a quiet and thoughtful meal with Jinx that evening.
    We had eaten in silence for fully ten minutes when I was drawn from my own reflections by the realization that there was no reason for her to be so deep in thought.
    “Jinx.”
    She started and dropped her fork. It clattered on her plate and she smiled awkwardly, then laughed. “You frightened me.”
    But I had hardly whispered her name. “Anything wrong?”
    She wore a shimmering, cream-colored frock that retreated far below her shoulders. In so doing, it presented a considerable expanse of tanned skin as a backdrop for her long, dark hair.
    “I’m all right,” she said. “I was thinking about Dad.”
    She glanced toward the study and her hands came up to hide her face. I went around the table to offer condolence, but only stood there, confused over the realization that something was not quite right. I could understand her bereavement, since she and her father had had only each other. But this display of emotion was a striking throwback to the mid-twentieth century.
    Things had been different before enlightenment had modified the attitude toward death and swept away the vicious cruelty of the funeral convention. In those days, proof of death had to be established on a practical plane. Those who attended wakes and funeral services saw and believed. And they went away convinced that the loved one was actually beyond this life and that there would be no complications arising from a supposedly dead person showing up again. That the close ones also went away nursing traumatic wounds made little difference.
    As soon as technology asserted itself, however, proof of death was abundantly available even in such crude techniques as fingerprinting, biocapacitance indexing, and cortical resonance checks. And the deepest wound the family suffered was that of being told there had been a death and the body had been disposed of.
    What I’m trying to point out is that since I had known Jinx